Aspec(t) are SEC_ and Mario Gabola from Naples, Italy. SEC_ plays electronics through laptop, processed tapes, and analog synthesizer. Mario plays saxophone and feedbacks through a system of resonant drums and small speakers. Their music shares the timbrical research and the execution control typical of some radical improv music (Pateras/Baxter/Brown, John Butcher, Jim Denley, Bruce Russell,..), but meets the visceral intensity and the obscure poetic of the new aktionsm and of noise music (Rudolf Eb.er, Dave Phillips, Joke Lanz) as well as the research on analog devices and concrete sound materials of the sonic poetry (Lionel Marchetti, Jerome Noetinger). The result is a fascinating and inextricable forest of sounds: frenetic structures, noise explosions, ancestral cries, an unceasing perversion of the soundscape and the time stream.

The preceding was pretty much copied from the Fratto9 Under The Sky Records website so I didn't have to explain the background of this project in my own words. (Lazy, I know, but still effective.) To some extent, the label's description is accurate, although I might disagree with the word 'fascinating' and substitute 'inexorable' for 'inextricable'. All of the 11 tracks on 'Waspnest'; are mercifully brief; the longest at 4:09 and shortest at 45 seconds. I still suppose it qualifies as a full album even though it is a total of just under 27 minutes in length as it has been released as a 12' LP with 6 tracks per side. (My copy is a CDr, but you can't get that.) Every track is an episodic excursion into sound collage and you really have to love uncomfortable noise and abrupt sonic disturbances to get into this record. There also seems to a fair amount of (wordless) vocal utterances, from grunts and gasps to burblings and ululations interlaced in the sonic current. Thinks are crackling and squeaking one moment, then squealing and squalling the next. It's not something one can even try and make sense of. As experimental avant-garde music goes, this is pretty much the fringe, and those who enjoy a walk on the wild side of this genre are bound to be impressed. Sometimes minimal and sometimes full-throttle, 'Waspnest' is bound to shock you out of musical complacency, and it could be the tonic you need. Just keep in mind, some kinds of medicine can be a bitter pill to swallow.